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We've become obsessed with big data and analyzing it, though sometimes I think we get in our own way. The issue is that we preferentially collect quantitative data as if it were the only thing worth the time. In fact, quantitative data is but one kind of data, and the information it provides gives a one-dimensional view of the world. It's not wrong information -- just incomplete.

An opinion piece published this week in The New York Times gets something exactly wrong. In "Facebook Shouldn't Fact-Check," Jessica Lessin argues that it's not Facebook's job to fact-check the growing flood of fake news coming at us through its portal and social media more generally. She does have a point, but I think she doesn't take things far enough...

Oracle recently announced a new connection between its Service and IoT clouds. That makes total sense to me. I bet a lot of folks think of the Internet of Things as those machines that do things directed by algorithms -- and if so, they might wonder why they need to be connected to customer service, such an obviously human channel. It's not off base, however...

Since its founding in 2007, Zuora has been the champion of the subscription economy, as a differentiator for companies that sell products as services and have to bill and collect monthly rather than engaging in a single one-time transaction. ...

It's been a rough couple of months, and we should talk about something fun and not political, but CRM-centric. I know! Let's ask how the election influenced CRM. Seriously, there's a nugget in there that ought to get us all thinking about business and keep our minds off that other stuff. Come on, it'll be fun ...

I've been writing about customer loyalty a lot -- and not just to sell my book, though you can buy it any time you want. Seriously, though, markets everywhere are cooling. They once were ripe with new categories and products, but everybody now seems to have the new stuff, and growth is falling back to the baseline of organic growth. ...

"This looks like conventional partner relationship management on some recreational drug, which is a good thing," said Denis Pombriant, principal at Beagle Research The PRM space has been fragmented for a long time because "devising a general purpose facility for multiple types...

"There's a lot left unsaid here, and I'm not sure the methodology used in the survey was valid," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research. "What's the demographic breakdown of this survey?" People using and advocating for human touch are Baby Boomers, he su...

The recently released spreadsheet hacked from Salesforce board member Colin Powell's email names multiple companies that Salesforce was at least considering acquiring. In the aftermath of the initial reports, it's worth noticing that there were at least two enterprise resource planning/back office companies on the list: Workday and NetSuite. ...

This is going to be political but you won't be able to tell which side I'm on (if you choose to read on). You might ask, why on Earth would I get involved even tangentially in politics right now? The simple answer is that it impacts CRM and I have a viewpoint -- but as I say, I'm not picking or revealing a side ...

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have taken the industry by storm. Some say they will usher in a new age of better business processes and customer orientation, while others fret that automation will kill jobs. Both might be true ...

"It's the same as before but with new branding," said Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research. "I always thought Dynamics 365 was a strong offering with all of it in the cloud," he told CRM Buyer, "but I don't agree with any argument that because it has ERP,...

Dreamforce for many years has been too big for a single person to cover. While I participate in covering events like this, inevitably I am reduced to the story of the three blind people and the elephant. You can't experience enough of the elephant to describe it unless you can see it. Using your hands leaves you frustrated. In the case of Dreamforce, you can't go to all of the sessions...

There recently has been an increase in the talk -- pro and con -- about bots, AI and intelligent assistants. A lot of this talk has been percolating around the industry for decades. ...

"In support of the Administration's CNAP activities, these new SINs will provide government agencies with quicker and more reliable access to key, pre-vetted support services that will expand agencies' capacity to test their high-priority IT systems, rapidly address potential vulnerabilities, and stop adversaries before they impact our networks," said GSA Administrator Denise Turner Roth.

"It isn't the out of the ordinary that vendors need to be good at," suggested Denis Pombriant, managing principal at Beagle Research. "Rather, it's the run-of-the-mill, everyday, quotidian interaction -- blocking and tackling," he told CRM Buyer....

Something tells me that if Salesforce already leaked news about its new AI product, Einstein, that it might not be the biggest news that will emerge from Dreamforce next week. However, I also think Einstein will be involved in whatever is the big takeaway ...

Larry Ellison was having too much fun. In his second keynote of this year's Oracle OpenWorld user conference, he was talking about his company's database, Oracle 12c, and comparing it highly favorably to Amazon's competing databases. It seems Ellison always has fun, which is one likely reason that the 72 year-old CTO and executive chairman of the board, looks 52, sounds 42, and probably feels 32.

Automation has a habit of killing jobs, which has been true since the Industrial Revolution. However, it seems that we're discovering this truth all over again. We easily forget when we focus only on the job-creation aspects of automation, and that usually gets us in trouble. ...

The Sunday keynotes at Oracle OpenWorld were good -- especially when compared with prior years -- but they still suffered from the perennial problem of trying to stuff too much content into a two-hour event. ...